Just over four weeks ago a lovely lady that I know (I wont name her, to protect her privacy) found a budgie being chased by magpies.
Miraculously, she managed to coax him down from a tree by talking to him and then catch him in her little boys blanket.

Upon inspection, she noticed that he had scalyface. She quickly made an appointment with an avian vet. I agreed that if nothing too ghastly afflicted him other than the scalyface, which is treatable, I’d take him in to live with us.

Thankfully, he seemed in good health. I say he, but the scalyface covered his cere, so we were not sure of his gender at that time. He was 36g so a little underweight, but otherwise very lively with no parasites in droppings. The vet gave the little budgie an injection for the scalyface and follow up medication for 2 and 4 weeks time for me to administer.

I made up our hospital cage for his arrival as he needed to spend 4 weeks in quarantine before he was integrated into our flock.

Yesterday was the day that he met his 9 friends!

First of all we gave him his last meds, vaselined his beak, legs and feet, weighed him (46g!) put him into Balmoral (a cage in the corner). He immediately bashed a mirror, but quickly got a bit frustrated that he was not about and flying!

I opened the door, but he couldn’t work out how to get out, so after 30 minutes, I fixed some millet in the doorway. After about 20 minutes more, George came over to inspect the millet. Lemon came out to see George. George biffed him as if to say “don’t think you’re taking over, but I’ll show you the ropes” and then they flew off together!

Yesterday was spent exploring everything, the swings, playground, racks on the wall, most of the cages. He ate and drank after about 5 minutes of being out, really fast progress!

At budgie bed time he tried to follow George into the Summer Palace, but there was the little issue of navigating doors.
So I offered him a stick to stand on, amazingly he stood on it, but wouldn’t let me put him in the cage. I tried again a couple more times and he went in. Success!

Lemon and the other budgies (George, Sky and Lucy) in the Summer Palace took about 10 minutes to settle down, but eventually did.